Experience Makes a Badass
You can watch Kramer vs. Kramer. You can read a book or two (there are many). But the wisdom that comes with an experienced mentor will make all the difference as you move through this time.
Areas of Experience
Sadly, I have experience in many areas of the Family Courts. While some of them may not be in the “wins” column, the first hand experience is there to help limit the surprise you might feel as you go through your own divorce process.
Domestic violence hospitalization
Restraining orders
Document recovery
Support obligations
Post-separation abuse
Department of Child Protection and Permanency
Child support collection and enforcement
Forensic custody evaluations
Emergent orders
Transgender rights
Challenging paternity
Co-parenting therapy
Infidelity
Settlement negotiations
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
–Alice Walker
Meet Your Coach
I am Laurice, a single mom living in the Metro NYC area of New Jersey. Iowa/Nebraska born and raised, I moved to New York at 18 to become a star on Broadway. While that didn’t pan out as a performer, I have spent most of my career working in the arts as an administrator and manager.
For as long as I can remember I have treasured the opportunity to be there for someone going through it. I spent 16 years as a counselor at a youth leadership program where I had the opportunity to hold space with teens who were reckoning with their lives and experience. That time is priceless and helped shape me into the human I am today.
The short story of act two of my life is that I married my abusive boyfriend, believing I was carrying his baby. A year into our marriage he was charged with sexual assault of a teenager who worked in the restaurant we owned together. My world, that was already crumbling, was leveled. After two years of abuse, I decided to leave him for good. The only trouble was the State of New Jersey wouldn’t allow me to leave and return home to be with the family I so desperately needed at the time. The abuse escalated after I told him I was leaving, resulting in a trip to the ER.
In the year that followed, I pushed through the continued exertion of control that came at me in the form of unwanted visits to my home, family court motions, and emails laden with attacks on my character. There are times when I wonder how I did, but I survived it all. Then it occurred to me that surviving was not the end. Surviving is not my goal and I am sure it is not yours either. I choose to thrive.
During that terrible time, I was alone and isolated and raising a toddler without the support of family or friends. My family was able to get me money enough to retain an attorney but the retainer was gone before we ever got to court, so I learned how to represent myself. I needed support, and fast.
A militant atheist for many years, I was intrigued by the church I passed daily with a Pride flag flying and inspiring, social justice quotes on rotation out front. After months of avoidance I finally went on a Sunday morning. The rest is history. I have been a “devout” Unitarian Universalist since, working in two nonprofit faith organizations and on a (slow) path to seminary. It was there that I met husband #2, a musician and conductor with a quick wit and a tendency towards sarcasm.
Fast forward a few years and a dozen trips to Family Court, I finally had the courage to discover if my abusive ex-husband was my child’s biological father. He had threatened to kill me if I ever cheated, so that paired with my doctor’s belief there was no way I was carrying someone else’s baby meant I was invested in this story, that my abusive ex was the father of my child. If not, the choice to marry him and suffer was pointless.
I asked my friend and would-be Bio-Dad if he would take a test. We were all surprised and relieved to learn my abusive ex, XN, was not my child’s father. We thought it would be over. We were very wrong. The nutshell of it is that despite multiple DCPP investigations, a motion for custody from BioDad, and countless support hearings, motions, and calls from school administrators about my daughter’s wellbeing, XN remains in our lives. NJ Family Courts decided it didn’t matter that her biological father wanted custody or that XN has an arrest record for violence or that he never followed through on financial obligations. The overburdened courts let us down and we will never understand.
You may wonder why you would want a “loser” to coach you through this time. Consider this, though he is still around I was never institutionalized, my child wasn’t taken from me because I am a danger to her. Things XN tried to do repeatedly. And did I mention that in the midst of paternity proceedings my daughter came out to me as transgender and started to transition? You would not be wrong if you thought “that couldn’t have gone over well with a misogynistic ass like XN.” In fact, I had to fight for my daughter’s right to exist in Family Court. Despite the continued awfulness that comes with 5/14 nights with someone who terrifies her and is not her father, my daughter is thriving as her authentic self today and THAT is the biggest win I’ll ever have.
I am now in the midst of divorce #2, with husband #2 and we, my daughter and I, are both heartbroken that #2 chose to leave our family. After years of infidelity, lies, cruelty, and not being a priority to him, I opened the door for him to leave and he walked through it. That is an extreme oversimplification but there is more to read on the blog, so check it out.
After years of people telling me that I should coach other women how to manage their divorces, I finally heard them and said “OK!” and here we are! I live in Essex County with my middle schooler, two dogs, a bearded dragon, and a roach colony (to feed the dragon). I love working in my yard, entertaining, restoring our 100 year-old Sears & Roebuck home, and creating beautiful spaces where people feel welcome. This includes bootstrapping my sustainable home goods business, Chez Grae Creations. I am a musician and sing in a number of choirs and community organizations. Learning the art of meditation saved my sanity five years ago and I have a daily practice. I keep three different daily journals, including a journal to my daughter that I have kept since she was two months old. I also love to be outdoors and hike or walk daily at a local land reservation.
I choose to aim high. I choose to love again, to take risks in my career and in my personal life. I choose to reconnect with myself. I choose to pick up the broken pieces that remain after my marriage, to take the pieces that still fit and to abandon the ones that are no longer a part of my identity. I choose to honor and respect my past but to create a vision for my future. I choose to raise my voice in solidarity with other survivors and in protest of the societal norms and systems that failed to protect us. I choose to help other women fight for what they deserve and to build beautiful lives full of love, light, and badassery.
"Let's not mourn the mess and forget the moxie. Rather than waiting for the Someday life or, conversely, imagining our Someday life is in the rear view mirror and we'll never reclaim it, what if we embraced it all right now: all the hope, all the thrill, all the growth, all the possibility? What if everything is available to us right here in the middle of ordinary, regular life?"
-Jen Hatmaker